Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2018

From 15 to 17 May 2018, Luxembourg hosted the partners in the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) for their annual meeting. Several issues were discussed: the operations underway; the development of key strategies; initiatives in the humanitarian information and communication technologies (ICT) sector. The ETC is a global network of organisations with the goal of supplying communication services in humanitarian emergency situations. Since 2011, Luxembourg has been an active member of the ETC through the emergency.lu solution.

At the invitation of Christos Stylianides, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Romain Schneider, Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, and Dan Kersch, Minister of the Interior, made a working visit in February to the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) crisis centre in Brussels. During this visit, the ministers formalised the arrangements for the participation of emergency.lu in the European Union’s “Voluntary Pool”, a European mechanism for civil protection and tangible expression of European solidarity.

In operational terms, in 2018, the emergency.lu systems were operational in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Nigeria in support of the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF.

Since February 2017, a mobile emergency.lu satellite telecommunication system has been operating at the base camp of the International Humanitarian Partnership in Maiduguri in Nigeria. This deployment, at the official request of the World Food Programme (WFP), aims to support the Emergency Telecommunications Sector (ETS) in its efforts to ensure a coordinated response with the Nigerian government and the humanitarian organisations in the northwest of the country. At the official request of UNHCR and in support of the “Refugee Emergency Telecommunications Sector” (RETS), emergency.lu has been supplying services to the humanitarian community in Diffa, Niger, since May 2017.

In support of UNICEF, since September 2017 emergency.lu has supplied services in the Kasaï region in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In South Sudan, where emergency.lu has been present since January 2012, a system is still currently operational for UNICEF in Pibor.

20 terabytes (20 000 000 MB) of data were transmitted via the emergency.lu satellite links in 2018.